


As I Was On My Way Home From Diagon Alley

by chasing_givenchy



Series: Time Travel [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-06
Updated: 2013-02-05
Packaged: 2017-11-28 09:35:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/672931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chasing_givenchy/pseuds/chasing_givenchy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's arrogant and poor, a bad combination; she's short-tempered and owes him a favour, a worse combination. He's intrigued; she's keeping secrets. He drives the most dangerous Daimler London has ever seen; she can do magic. Is one little Galleon enough to hold them together, when there's more than just a brick wall to keep them apart?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. one

Notices from the Motor Vehicles Association are piling up, competing for attention with a court order, and a letter from his solicitor. The volume of the _Tristan and Isolde_ LP playing on the gramophone is perfectly adjusted. Half-trodden envelopes litter the paper bin, spilling their contents. _Magistrate's Court; 5 th January, 1974_. _Mr. Malfoy, following several citizens' complaints re: your vehicle, a sunshine-yellow 1933 Daimler_...

    The only sign that Mr. Malfoy is expecting Ginny Weasley's arrival is in the press-cutting tacked to the wall. It is a small, mostly-overlooked announcement: an introduction to the Magic of Memoryball being held on the fifteenth of February: a fluff piece, if you will, telling London society about the charitable orchestra playing that night. The writer is the nearly-unknown Ginny Weasley, who reports at Fleet Street at nine in the morning, and disappears after five.

   A pot of tea has been thoughtfully set to boil on the Primus stove. A plate of mouldy biscuits is ready to be served, ready to dispel any illusions of hospitality any visitor may harbour.

*

The end of the war meant the end of any non-disclosure agreements the _Daily Prophet_ had signed with the Ministry. While Shacklebolt's Aurors catch more and more Death Eaters each day, the _Prophet_ also runs a series of exposés on various aspects of the war. The _Potterwatch_ radio programme had been the first: a disastrous article, hardly corroborated by facts, since none of the original _Potterwatch_ cast would talk to any journalists. Then, someone high up in the editorial board had an even better idea: something even more sensational. Ginny, new inductee, youngest of the now-prestigious Weasley family, is saddled with a new project for the paper: _Death Eaters Placed under Dumbledore's Protection_.

   But there had been only one such boy: Draco Malfoy.

*

"If you're selling raffle tickets, I'm not interested in buying."

   Ginny Weasley managed to insert her foot into the doorway, just before it slammed shut in her face. "Why would I be selling raffle tickets?" she asked, bemused. The blond resident of Flat 5A stared at her suspiciously.

   "They're supposed to be all the rage nowadays, what? For people who don't have the acumen to work the Exchange, of course." The supercilious look on his face implied _he_ knew just how to 'work' the bear market, even though Ginny had no clue. She slyly studied this man: light-haired, pale from grey skies, thin, angular, and insufferable. She had no doubt as to his identity.

   So she asked, "Draco Malfoy?"

   His eyes narrowed, face visible through the crack in the door. "So you read my post now, as well as sell raffle tickets?"

   "I write for the _Tribune_ ," she corrected, toeing his copy of the paper lying in a bundle on the doorstep.

   "You certainly dress like a newspaperwoman."

   She blushed. She knew she shouldn't be letting Draco Malfoy, of all people, rile her up, but she knew she must look like a circus performer. How to Dress like the Muggles wasn't something they taught at Hogwarts, and Dad wasn't a very good example unfortunately. Skinny jeans, a herringbone corset-like top, and a floral bonnet were all that the Gladrags woman could provide. Ginny wondered if robes would have been less conspicuous after all.

   "We're writing about the _Magic of Memory_ gala, and you lead the string section with your violin. I know you received my letter, announcing my arrival. Can I come in?"

   He held the door open wider, and she thought it surprisingly hospitable of him. As she tried to enter, he shouldered his way into the narrow space he'd made, lounging against the door frame and effectively blocking her way.

   "I don't make a habit of letting strange women into my house." Something like mischief danced in those grey eyes, making her suppress a shudder. "Why don't you buy me a coffee instead?"

   Ginny sighed deeply, and stepped back from the door.

   "I like mine black, but with two sugars on the side."

*

Draco Malfoy, twenty, had lived in London for as long as he could remember. He had certainly been living there since the accident, four years ago.

   "What accident four years ago?" Ginny looked at him curiously. They stopped a fish n' chips vendor, and she watched queasily as he piled up some ridiculously greasy chips.

   "Motor accident, I suppose," answered Malfoy, shrugging. "Want some?" She shuddered at his offering, and shook her head. "All I remember is coming to on the street, ambulances wailing, and feeling like I had suffered a great, terrible fall." The undercurrent of hushed theatricality would have swept Ginny away, but the sight of the chips grounded her.

   "You mean as if from heaven?" she said flatly.

   Malfoy stared at her in surprise, completely without mischief or guile. "Exactly."

   It was actually difficult to steer him away from his own self-importance. Riddled with a foggy amnesia since the "accident," the only link he had to his earlier life was the antiques in his flat— antiques so valuable that he instinctively knew he'd once been rich. ("There are gold coins in a drawer of my writing desk. _Gold_ , Ginevra. So much that I could ruin the economy with them.") She pretended to understand, but the Muggles' paper money had always seemed silly to her. (Why, it could get lost during a game of Monopoly.)

   "Speaking of which," continued Malfoy, trailing off as he eyed her thoughtfully. "That's an interesting watch you're carrying. Is that an heirloom or a stage prop? Must be an heirloom; looks rather real to me, incongruous as that is."

   Ginny was speechless, wondering how this insult had come flying out of the blue.

   "You could always pawn it, you know," he went on, with the air of someone who considered himself an expert. "You must obviously be hard-up for money if you've taken to dressing like a scarlet woman."

   Ginny's eyes widened larger than saucers, and she clutched the Ministry-issued Time Turner protectively. Her office would have a fit if she pawned it to a hapless Muggle. And who was he calling a _scarlet woman_? Article or no article, she was about to tick Malfoy off for that aside, when she noticed the very earnest look on his face.

   "Oh _Mer_ — _my mum_ ," she groaned in shock. "You're trying to be helpful, aren't you?"

   Malfoy snickered. "You curse in the name of your mother?"

*

A lucky coincidence ensured Ginny would get more than just one audience with Malfoy. This might not have been so lucky after all, because she was just a little exasperated by his pompous self-importance. As he reached into his wallet to pay for coffee on Piccadilly, a faded photograph fluttered out.

   Ginny bent instinctively to retrieve it. It was black-and-white, and disappointingly still. Then she saw who was in it.

   "You have _her_ picture?"

   Malfoy started guiltily, and grabbed it back. He stuffed it out of sight. "I've always had it," he said coolly, but his hands shook. He stuffed those into his pockets as well. "I assume I knew her before the accident."

   Well, that was a neat little lie, the first half-truth he'd told Ginny. He'd never known this girl, didn't remember a single tangible detail about her: only that she flitted in and out of his dreams. "Wait..." he said slowly, fixing his gaze on Ginny. "Do _you_ know her?"

   "Of course I bloody well—" Ginny shut up. Malfoy's imperious, demanding eyes narrowed, eyebrows rising and knitting, and silently asking, _Well_? She knew then that she held all the bargaining chips in one hand. "I can arrange a meeting," she offered carefully, raising her gaze from his hands to hold his grey eyes. "Only if you agree to stick around as long it takes for me to write my article."

   The assessing stare that raked over her would have made lesser mortals uncomfortable. Finally, he shrugged. "Fine."

   "Good. So do I draw up an agreement, and we sign—" She knew a bit of magic affixed to paper would effectively hold him to their arrangement. His frigid glare stopped her mid-word, though.

   "I'm giving you my word. Isn't that enough?"

   With the old Malfoy, the promised "word" would have been "sucker," and Ginny would have been an imbecile to take it. She found herself nodding as she shook his hand in assent.

*

"He still has my photograph? Oh that poor boy. What has living with the Muggles _done_ to his brain?" Amused pity flashes in cool, green eyes as she talks of her beloved friend.

   Ginny deliberately hasn't mentioned that Draco Malfoy had forgotten magic: Astoria Greengrass despises him enough already. The other girl wears a large straw hat indoors, brim pulled over her face, because even in the Leaky Cauldron, folks will be wondering what someone like her is doing, having a gin and tonic with someone from the _Prophet_.

   "Darling, even his best friends think of him as a traitor." Astoria sighs, brushing an errant fringe off her forehead with the back of her hand. The gesture flows with practised ease. "I'm not throwing my lot in with the enemy for the sake of sentimentalism and a _photograph_."

   "He obviously remembers you," Ginny tells her persuasively. "He has no idea who you are because Dumbledore's enchantment that sent him back in time, also modified his memory, but he talks about you all the time." ( _Ad nauseam_ , she adds privately.) "You're the woman of mystery in his life. Very film noir." The expression slips out before Ginny can check herself.

   The slow smirk spreading across Astoria's face means that she recognises the 'Mugglespeak,' even if she doesn't quite understand it. "Been spending a lot of time with our lovely traitor, have you?"

*

The sun bears down on London, scorching feathers of the birds perched on the brick wall of Diagon Alley. Two very unlikely girls pause at the wall, which separates the magical world from the ordinary.

   "Don't we need a Time Turner?" asks Astoria, eyes very wide, and she probably knows it's a loaded question. Ginny ignores her in favour of crouching on the ground, trying to measure up the wall.

   The new device is for emergencies only, said the dour Unspeakable of the Department of Mysteries, since it can carry even Muggles through time. If ( _in case_ , they demurred,) she needed to drag Draco Malfoy kicking and screaming back into his own time.

   Ginny silently counts upwards, then left, and taps her wand against the magic brick. The wall parts, allowing them to step into a whole other London.

*

She looked incongruous, standing under his window, ostrich-feathered hat over her dark hair. The plume of the feather peered out from under the brim of her parasol, but she was so radiant she would have looked incongruous anywhere. She was older than her photograph, but unmistakable.

   He lifted her bare hand to his lips, and his breath hitched at the sensation of her cool green gaze holding his.

*

Astoria doesn't shut up about Draco Malfoy, and when Ginny ignores her owls, they resort to pecking at the putty on the windows. Most of these letters entreat Ginny to take Astoria back with her to 1974 again, and on the other side of the wall, Draco is little different. Her tall sheaf of case notes is rising ever rapidly because he's oddly garrulous these days.

   "He's so old-fashioned," admits Astoria in a letter, unsure if it's a good thing, "but at least that makes him a real gentleman, at last." Ginny finds a way to slip this into conversation with Malfoy. They sit in coffee houses and immigrant Italians' restaurants, and he doodles strategies on napkins about how he will bowl over Astoria. He's only ever met her once.

   "I can go home on my own thank you," Ginny will say, side-stepping his offers to walk her home when he feels especially generous. She uses the Time Turner to return to her flat because there's no Diagon Alley yet in Malfoy's time. Her case notes are divided into neat headings: _Magic of Memory_ , _Fake_ Tribune _article_ , _Actual_ Prophet _article_ , _Malfoy's schemes to win Astoria_ , _How to keep Astoria happy_ , and the fattest of them all: _What Makes Malfoy the Muggle Tick_.

   Sometimes, it's astounding how much you discover when you're only on the outside, simply peering in.

*

It wasn't as terrible to visit 1974 as Ginny complained about. Her notebook was slashed with frustrated margin notations, often complaining about the Impossibility That Was Draco Malfoy, but that never stopped her from going back. By now, she had enough material to ghost-write his biography as it was. Bringing Astoria with her to the past was only part she had to think twice about, but it made Malfoy happy, and Ginny's job was to keep him that way.

   Now, she timed her knock as carefully as she could to avoid meeting Astoria Greengrass on the exit. While she was responsible for bringing them together, she wasn't very keen on actually being around. Malfoy's blow-by-blow accounts of his "not a date; what's a date?" encounter was bad enough, and inevitably demanded Ginny should dissect it from the "female perspective."

   He answered the door in a sauce-stained apron, grinning at the comically transparent shock on her face. His apron might even be sporting a burn hole or two. "Won't you come in?" he asked her with exaggerated formality.

   "You made dinner for her, didn't you?" guessed Ginny, eyeing his self-satisfied smirk. "You look like the cat that laid out a four-course meal with the canary and ate it, washing it down with some Montrachet. Your dinner was a smashing success, wasn't it?"

   "Of course," he assented modestly. She wrinkled her nose, as the extremely strong smell of vinegar assaulted her senses: very useful if he was anticipating a large-scale vampire attack. "Now I'm going to make something for you, and you can rave about my talent, just like she did."

   "All those lessons paid off, I see?" she said, laughing as she peeked into his kitchen. It looked like the aftermath of a bomb raid. She sincerely hoped Astoria hadn't been allowed in there.

   "Of course." Malfoy leaned against the entryway to his kitchen, watching her with a pleased smirk on his face. "I may owe you one, after all, Ginevra. Now if only you'd taught me how to make dessert..."

   Ginny's roving eye spotted the cake pan, the eggs, the flour and the chocolate powder, all expectantly laid out for her. Her right eyebrow curved upward.

*

"You've got chocolate on your face," she pointed out seriously, chuckling when Draco tried to stare at the smear on his own nose. She leaned forward on the cold kitchen tiles, finger hovering inches from the tip of his nose. "Right... _there_."

   He grabbed her hand by the wrist, and guided it to thumb the chocolate off his face. The way he held her eyes, she was momentarily afraid of what he was about to do, but he merely rubbed the chocolate from her hand and licked it off his own.

*

Ginny materialises on the right side of Diagon Alley, landing ungracefully, the chain of the Time Turner collaring her to Astoria. Draco's last words as he walked her down the stairs are still clinging to her skin like perfume.

   _I can't do it without you_. _You'll be in the front row, won't you_?

   The orchestra performs at the Magic of Memory ball this Friday.

   She doesn't know how she'll get Astoria to attend. Friday is also the evening of Blaise Zabini's engagement, twenty-six years later.

*

The tuxedo was borrowed from the flute section, but no one would have guessed it. Ginny almost didn't recognise him as the light fell on the violinist: he looked dashing, concentrating and utterly engaged in the melody, as though he'd stepped out from a period oil painting.

   In the silence of the Savoy, the hushed whispers picked him out of the ensemble, wondering about him and spreading rumours faster than light. She watched him from the only box seat she'd ever sat in, an empty seat next to her reserved for Astoria. The white stage lights reflected off his flaxen hair, head bowed in complete absorption over the strings.

   He looked like he had fallen from heaven, after all.

*

She took him to dinner because that was their practice: he acted as if he didn't want her around, and sulked when she tried to leave. Any suggestion that _he_ pay for dinner was treated like a hilarious joke made in bad taste, but he ended up doing so anyway.

   "Don't try to make talk about it," warned Draco in between mouthfuls of risotto. He waved his fork threateningly at her, and Ginny wondered briefly what Draco would look like back at home, eating take-out off his knees with a spork. Somehow, those weren't nearly as threatening as long four prongs of sharpened metal.

   "Talk about what?" she asked innocently, shielding her mouth because Draco always tutted like Aunt Muriel when she talked with her mouth full.

   "Nothing," he growled, "because there is nothing to talk about. I thought she'd make it anyway," he went on the same breath, "you know, at the last minute." He stabbed a meatball. "Dramatic, like those trashy novels, but I'd hoped, anyway."

   Ginny said nothing.

   "I mean the very fact that I met her at all, after four years of carrying an anonymous picture in my wallet— that almost makes me believe in the magic that those trashy romance novels talk about."

   She sipped her water awkwardly, and tried not to bring up magic.

   "You've been awfully quiet, Ginevra," he added suspiciously.

   There it was again. _Ginevra_. She'd never told him her full name.

   "So the boat sails for Paris next week," he began in an attempt to change the subject. He was clearly unnerved by her unusual quietness; she didn't talk all that much, but she was hardly quiet.

   "Paris, then Verona?" she asked, remembering her own notes. For someone who'd never left the island, the names invoked faraway lights, music to transcend the impossible distance, and a night that would sweep one away feet-first.

   "The _Tribune_ will want you coming with us, won't it?" asked Draco casually. "Good publicity for your editor," he went on quickly, covering up whatever lapse he might have accidentally made. Ginny laughed, wondering if Paris meant the same thing in 1974 as it did in 2000.

   "She'll come, too, won't she?" he pressed on, and she realised with a start, that it probably did.

*

When they run into each other at Gladrags, Ginny wants to sink through the ground and die rather than be asked why her arms are full of herringbone corsets. (In her defence, she is trying to return them for something less... _scarlet woman_ -ish.)

   On the other hand, Astoria looks pampered, skin aglow, virtually glittering. The sunlight reflecting off her diamonds momentarily makes Ginny's eyes water. "Very nice," she gasps, and Astoria nods, pleased to receive the reaction she had wanted. Ginny feels like a bad person for doing this to her, but her loyalty is to Draco, not Astoria.

   "Come to Paris for him. It'll mean the world."

   "He's a traitor." Astoria's smile is sadder and more understanding than what Ginny's aching heart can bear. "Blaise would never understand."

*

Paris came over the horizon, bright, piercing through the fog of a cold, dank night. The coastline rose out of the sea, their destination seemingly even closer than several thousand miles. A hand shook her awake, pulling her out of her cabin and onto the deck. The ground dipped and swayed beneath her, as she stood, barefoot, huddled in a blanket, Draco's arm securely around her. "Isn't it beautiful?" he murmured into her ear, pressing a cool cheek against her hair.

   She could hear his heart beating, thinking of someone else. The moonlight set the lines of his face in silhouette, pensive and wistful, and she agreed, slowly, "More than I imagined."

*

"They're trying to kill me," said Draco in utter seriousness, hands shaking as Ginny carefully did his bowtie for him in the green room of the Palais Garnier. She was clumsy, having always used magic to do this for her brothers, later the occasional boyfriend who attended Ministry charities with her, but Draco didn't care. He was going to pieces, and ineffectual as she was, Ginny was still the more competent of the two.

   "You've performed to huge rooms with judging, appraising audiences before, haven't you?" she asked, running her eyes over his carefully groomed appearance.

   "Not like this," he moaned, burying his face in his hands. His fingers parted fractionally for him to peep through them. "I always wanted to perform in Europe. Sweeping audiences, a people who actually understand culture, unlike the rows of greengrocers who do business under my flat. I had no idea it would be this bloody nerve-wracking. Death by fear."

   "Death by violin being smashed on your head is also a possibility," Ginny reminded him, chuckling at his characteristic theatricality. "Georges is getting even more hysterical than you, and he's certainly on the brink of going berserk."

   "I can't pretend that doesn't terrify me," admitted Draco after a pause of struggling to deny it. "Homicidal conductors were always my pet phobia as a child."

   "You look fantastic. You'll do fantastic on that stage. You always do." Smiling, she ran a finger down the side of his face, swiping off a smear of make-up that coated his skin. "You also look very pretty." He cracked the faintest hint of a grin, and she left, dodging the other members of the string section on her way out.

   The sight of Draco Malfoy, standing in his first tuxedo, staring bemusedly down at his shaking hands was both unreal and endearing.

   " _Weasley_! There you are. I've looked for you everywhere."

   Head filled with errant, fond thoughts of Draco, (there was a surprise,) Ginny nearly tripped headlong as someone shouted her name. Spinning around in the dusty carpeted corridor of the theatre, she made out a woman in eveningwear striding towards her.

   "Hello, Weasley."

   "Greengrass," she greeted involuntarily.

   Astoria beamed, tilting her head so that her diamonds swung and glittered. Around her throat, as casual as an elaborate piece of expensive jewellery, was unmistakably a Time Turner. "Do you like it?" she asked innocently, tilting her chin up to emphasise her point. Ginny didn't know what to say. "Blaise wrangled it for me, called in a favour with an Unspeakable."

   _Rookwood, or his children_ , surmised Ginny, tipped off by how careful Astoria sounded. She nodded non-committally as though she didn't understand. "How lucky you— _Astoria_! _Your hair_."

   Artfully hidden by an upturn of her usual fringe, Astoria would have gotten away with it if the lighting hadn't been so dark in the corridor. She smiled ruefully, and ran a hand through her hair, making no effort to hide the sudden streak of shocking white.

   "The magic of it is very unstable," she explained. Her nonchalant shrug made Ginny flinch. "Needless to say, it's going to be dangerous to visit anymore." _Dangerous magic_ made a poor enemy for Astoria Greengrass, but she went on: "Everyone knows Draco as a traitor for leaving us so soon after he was Marked. Everyone. Even his best friend."

   "And you?" asked Ginny quietly.

   "Me?" Astoria's eyes widened in child-like innocence. "I'm just a girl, what do I understand of politics between big men? I've only come tonight to enjoy the music."

   "There's a box seat with your name in it," the other girl promised. This was the Palais Garnier, the Opéra de Paris, where dreams were going to come true.

*

Blaise Zabini would be telling, for years afterwards, the story of Astoria's memorable romp through Muggle Europe: "seeing the sights the blind way." Blind was a description that would stick with three young people for a long time to come.

   "You were enchanting, as fascinating as they come— _Draco_! Tell me where we're going."

   The stone staircase spiralled down deeper and deeper, and Astoria's heart beat harder and faster. She knew these stones, this route, what lay deeper beneath: candles and lapping water, and the romance of a bygone century. Draco's grasp on her wrist was familiar and assured, but she found herself pulling back. "No, no, no, we can't."

   He stopped on the stair, whirling around in the dimly-lit passage. His grey eyes flashed with surprise and confusion. Astoria's mother always reminded her: _make sure he loves you just a little more than you do him_. Too little is not good enough, too much more is dangerous.

   "Tell me where we're going," she demanded, her voice light, but her tone firm. "I will not go exploring dark, mysterious passageways with you, Draco Malfoy."

   "I want to show you something: a world beneath this one."

   "The underground lake?" she asked him, ducking her head to hide her smile as she descended just one more stair to step closer to him. "The mysterious chandelier, the rumour of the buried body, and the lake that is the lair of an enigmatic Phantom?"

   The corner of Draco's mouth quirked in smile. "I'd say I don't believe in ghosts, but you've heard they make an excellent setting?"

   Astoria's smile was strained, and she leaned back against the wall, letting him still hold her hand. It was cold down there, and he was carefully rubbing her hand in between his to warm her up. "Don't," she told him. "Don't. We mustn't. Draco, I can't ever come back. I have a different life waiting for me."

   "I don't understand. You're rambling." His hands didn't let go hers.

   "What I'm trying to say is that this is over." She tried to hold his gaze, convey that this was final, but she couldn't bring herself to break away from his touch. "I have a new life waiting for me, and _we_ can't be together in it."

   His brow furrowed, eyes narrowing. "This is the twentieth century; communication is easier than breathing." Abruptly, he dropped her hand, shoving his balled fists into his jacket: his hands were shaking again.

   "Communication isn't the problem now, is it?"

   "But your photograph. In my wallet. I've kept it all these years, and known we were meant to be together. "Astoria, I may be shite at expressing myself, but I care for you. I care for you more than I could ever articulate—"

   "You're infatuated with me," she said softly, and he violently shook his head. "You'll forget me if I'm not there, and that's what you need to do."

   "But your photograph—"

   "We're not children anymore, Draco Malfoy," and the finality in her voice was incomprehensible to him, and terrible. _Had_ they been children together? He didn't remember. It wasn't fair: he'd known this girl for a lifetime, and he didn't remember her. And now that he did know her, she wasn't going to stay.

   "You said you have a new life—"

   "I'm going to be married," she said harshly, no longer sympathetic and sad. "His name is Blaise Zabini, and he will be my future." _He was your best friend_. "This is goodbye."

   "Then say goodbye the way I deserve to be said goodbye to, when you throw me away." She was always going to marry this fellow, realised Draco, in a rush of blood and anger. She'd known all this while, and she'd still come into his life to turn it upside down. Her green eyes glittered like crude emeralds, and he stepped closer still, lips inches away from her blood-red mouth. He leaned in to clinch the distance, but she turned her head away, and his lips pressed coldly against her cool cheek: a gentleman's goodbye.

   She caught his hand, grip tight, and forcefully pressed his palm over her heart. Through the fabric of her dress, he could feel it beating loudly, uncontrollably, painfully, mirroring his own.

*

Astoria Greengrass emerged into the marble lobby of the Palais Garnier, blinking back tears in the sudden onslaught of light. She'd done what she'd come to do, and it was pointless trying to be sentimental over it. The concert had been wonderful, and now she was just another society lady going home.

   Sitting on the sprawling steps of the opera house, shielded from the cold by a billowing cloak that was unmistakably Draco's, sat Ginny Weasley.

   Astoria's hand on her shoulder made her start, as though she hadn't expected the other girl to emerge this early. "I thought he was going to sweep you away with some grand declaration of love," said a bemused Ginny, probably blunter because of the cold. "Did you turn him down and run?"

   "It was stupid of me to come: you can say I told you so." Astoria's grimace was all the answer Ginny needed. "I'm going home to Blaise, and this is last time I'll need _this_." She held up the golden clock by its thin chain, and dangled it. "Time really flies on this side of Diagon Alley." She shook her head, looking at Ginny assessing. "I don't know how you do it."

    "Do what?" asked Ginny warily.

    "Your parents probably live in London a few blocks down from Draco's. That's where the wizarding community is. Put me in your place, and I'd never be able to withstand the temptation to fiddle with time."

   Ginny lied and said it had never crossed her mind.

   "Of course. Because you're the good girl, Weasley, and I'm the wicked one, and it's the nice ones who always get the wicked boys in the end." With that, and a cryptic smile, Astoria tossed her dark hair and made her way down the theatre steps. She vanished before she reached the ground.

*

She found Draco halfway underground where Astoria left him. If there had been any fight left in him, it was gone by now. "I want to show you what she could have had," he told her, leading her carefully down the steps. The gurgle of the underground stream grew louder, the light steadily brighter as they descended.

   At the very bottom, someone had lit a circle of candles, so tall that the entire passageway was flooded with light. There was a shallow dais before ground disappeared under the stream. There was no boat tethered ready to take her deeper underground, but there was a violin. Draco gestured for her to take a seat, and she didn't protest, sitting in the brightly lit dark, his cape clutched around herself. She closed her eyes as he played, banishing the dark, the silence, every dark thought there ever was.

*

 _La Fenice_. The name was a promise: the phoenix, like those mysterious birds that lived forever. ("I want to live forever.") Draco was impressed when Ginny let slip she knew all about phoenixes, and he listened with scepticism and interest as she told him about Fawkes, everything she'd heard from Harry. When you're eleven and think you're dying in a dungeon, you tend not to remember very much.

   "Books," sighed Draco, as though he knew too much on the subject. "The old men who write these books and about these myths, they smoked so much opium they were already floating a fairyland of myths."

   "All magic is an opium dream?" asked Ginny curiously. She pushed back on her bed in her cabin, as the boat sailed inexorably to Verona, and it was late, but neither Draco nor she were letting each other go that night.

   "All beautiful things are like an opium dream." It made her vaguely uncomfortable that he should look at her like that, as he said it. He seemed to realise he was staring because he coughed, and averted his gaze.

   "One day you're going to play the violin for me once again, won't you?" she asked him, changing the subject. When he quirked an eyebrow questioningly, she laughed and went on: "Why Mr. Malfoy, how little you understand women. Don't you know we dream of being serenaded?"

   His face twisted in an expression of sheer incredulity. "Why Miss Weasley, the excessive romanticism of the sillier sex never fails to amuse me."

   She threw her pillow at him, and before he could duck, it smacked him satisfyingly in his face.

   That night, when the boat drew close enough to be able to see the lighthouse on the coast, he didn't shake her awake and bring her onto the freezing deck. Ginny woke up to the familiar strains of _Figaro_ breaking through the half-lit dawn air. Peering through the foggy window of her cabin, she could make out Draco Malfoy, dressed in white and black, playing his violin on the deck. He held his balance like a sailor, and continued to serenade her just the way long-ago heroes must once have.

*

The Memory of Magic orchestra tour ended with Verona. Newspapers would be filling columns with the overwhelming contributions received by the Memory charitable fund, and correspondents would be holding up Verona as a standard for future performances. One night at La Fenice theatre changed the world.

   Ginny stayed awake, notebook propped on her knee, while Draco lay on the gently rocking bed beside her. It was so narrow they had to be careful to not pitch off the edge; for all the world to see, he was apparently asleep, one arm flung over his face, tired of teasing her for being a workaholic.

   "I have to get this written," she protested, but he was hardly listening.

   She was glad that Draco was slowly dozing off: she was terrible at goodbyes, and when he woke up again, she would be gone. The Time Turner lay like a heavy weight under her collar, tucked out of sight, and hopefully out of mind. It taunted her silently, dangling the impossible option of destroying it and living with him in his time like this until they grew old together.

   _Could she_? The temptation burned fiercely, and she glanced down at her companion's peaceful unlined face. His blonde hair brushed his forehead, right arm half-hidden by his sleeve, disguising the scar. He was safer, happier here than he could be in her time where Astoria had no place for him.

   Did she belong here in this reality?

   Her parents, her friends, her roots were somewhere else, and the thought of leaving it all behind was frightening.

   "You're staring," mumbled Draco, wearily shifting his arm to stare upside-down at her with large, earnest grey eyes. "I wonder what you're thinking all the time."

   "I'm thinking of you," admitted Ginny honestly, heart skipping at the way his breath hitched at her words.

   "Probably counting the ways you think I'm an insufferable—"

   "No," she corrected, breaking him off, "no, not right now." And she reached out to brush his cheek with her fingers, caressing pale skin and cupping the side of his face. Draco held his breath, holding very still, knowing what she would do, and silently pleading with his eyes. She bent forward upside-down, red hair swinging forward to tickle his nose, and she kissed him full on the mouth. Gently at first, her lips lingered against his, but his mouth parted, deepening it. She kissed him again, and this time he wasn't tentative: he was desperate, and urgent, and hungry in the way he crawled up into her lap, locking an arm around her, the other hand running through her hair: he couldn't stop kissing her, her mouth red.

   The buttons popped off her blouse of their own accord, his hand running up creamy skin, eyes silently admiring the curve of her body, wanton, unashamed want. She let him push her back down against the pillows, hands easily undoing the buckle of his belt. He kissed her, lips travelling down, sucking against the tender skin of her neck.

   Her hand reached for the fly of his trousers, and his feet kicked them off. The blouse flew over her head, rustling to the floor. "Love me," he whispered, breath hitching awkwardly, as he kissed her again.

*

Astoria had left Draco two mementos, both of which Ginny recognised with dread pooling in her stomach. The sensation might have easily been what Draco inspired in her, but he was turning over a gold Galleon in his hands. "I have these in my flat, if you believe it," he told her incredulously. She nodded absently, having voluntarily brought up the subject of Astoria's keepsakes herself.

   "Do you know what it is?" she found herself asking him, just in case this Muggle remembered what real money was. Draco shook his head. "Me neither." In his other hand, he absently fingered Astoria's experimental Time Turner, and she swore silently never to tell him what that was for.

   "I want to try something," she told him, leaning forward and taking the Galleon out of his grasp. It was warm on her palm, as though it glowed with magic.

   "What are you doing?" asked a scandalised Draco, sitting bolt upright from under the covers, when he realised why she was holding a knife to the coin.

   Ginny laughed, and reminded him he had no idea what this was _really_ worth. "Besides," she went on, touching the tip of the knife to the coin the way she'd seen Bill do it once. The first scratch appeared in the metal. "I'm going to write something on this coin that only the two of us will know." (Draco winced and squeezed his eyes shut.) "And then I'll spend it."

   (" _Nooo_ ," he gasped in exaggerated horror.)

   "And if it comes back to you, then it means we're meant to be together."

   He stayed silent, and slowly opened an eye. "What if no one accepts a defaced gold coin?"

   "They will," said Ginny serenely, leaning over to inspect her handiwork more carefully. "That's the magic of it."

   " _Magic_ ," repeated Draco.

   "Sorry?"

   "Magic. That's what you should write. Magic is the one thing that you and I have, that we'll never share with anyone else."

   The tears welled up in Ginny's throat when she looked up at him, blinking furiously to not let her smile falter. Draco seemed to sense something was wrong, because he propped himself up on one elbow, and plucked the defaced Galleon from her hand, and tossing it among his clothes. "You know what I'm going to use that for?" he asked her, kissing the hollow of her neck, the highest he could reach. "I am—" His lips steadily travelled lower.

   "I am going to use all the gold I have in the world to buy us more time."

*

A white formal shirt, no longer crisply ironed, lies in a crumpled heap on the floor with a pair of trousers and well-polished shoes. Against the sharp white of the fabric, two tiny items glitter and flash in the morning sunlight: a gold coin, and a curious gold pendant shaped like a clock. The door is still locked from the inside; there is only one occupant in the cabin when he wakes up.


	2. two

**one and the rest**

**the end**

 

"Mama! There's one of your visitors coming up the path. Looks like your solicitor... what on earth did you do this time, Mama?"

   Two women wedged at the upper-storey window, peering suspiciously through the curtain. The man pauses downstairs, apparently disoriented, and studies the door of the manor as though unsure if this is the right address.

   "He looks like he's come to deliver our post," sniffles Mrs. Greengrass, "and at any rate, that's not my solicitor, you over-eager child. I've never seen him before in my life."

   The man steps back, shielding his eyes against the sun as he peers up at the façade of the big house. He's old, brushing his forties, hair shot with premature silver, and he reminds Astoria inexorably of Lucius Malfoy. _Come to do business with Blaise_ , she supposes, but the man steps back, craning his neck further to make out where he's at.

   "The house-elf will take care of it," says Mrs. Greengrass dismissively, disappointed because she has been expecting her solicitor; _worried_ , in fact, that he hasn't appeared yet. But Astoria gasps, as if struck with realisation and horror, and before Mrs. Greengrass can protest, she's running down the stairs, hurtling through the house and flinging the front door open. The tiny house-elf in her path is sent flying back.

   "Excuse me," says the man at the door politely, looking at her with complete non-recognition. "I think I've come to the wrong house—"

   Astoria would have corrected him, if she hadn't been so out of breath.

   "I'm looking for someone," he went on pleasantly, "the owner of something valuable that was left behind among my things." He held out a hand, fingers opening to reveal a single Galleon pressed in his palm.

   For a minute, Astoria is afraid that it's all a mistake, this is someone else, he can't be looking for Ginny if all he's holding is a Galleon and nothing else. Maybe this is a stray Muggle, those find the house sometimes.

   "I've been looking for her for a very long time," goes on this man, and Astoria's brow furrows, ready to dismiss him and send him on his way. "I think I used to have her photograph, but now I've lost it, and the only thing I know is that she knows... what magic is."


End file.
